Resilience, Self-Care, and Healing for Educators

Jason Johnson:
My name is Jason Johnson and I’m going to be moderating this webinar. The webinar that we’re holding as you’re aware is the resilient self-care and healing for educators webinar, really important topics right now. And so we’re thrilled to be joined by some real field experts on the topic. Let me introduce everybody and then I want to get right into the conversation because I know that they have a lot of really important perspective and information on these topics. And I want to make sure they have plenty of time to share their thoughts. So, as I mentioned, I’m Jason Johnson. I’m a school psychologist with the WhyTry organization. Love what I do, love being able to interact with all of you. I’m going to be moderating the session today. And by moderate, I mean, I’m going to get them going and try to stay out of their way. 

Jason Johnson:
We are thrilled to be joined by Joe and Dardi Hendershott. Let me give them both hopefully proper individual introductions. Dr. Joe Hendershott, Ed.D., is a sought after speaker about the effects of trauma on learning and behaviors, working with wounded students, founder of the Hope 4 The Wounded, also provides consulting staff training, online courses. He’s authored three books. We’re going to talk I think specifically about one of them today. He’s got over 30 years in education and is the recipient of the 2015 National Crystal Star Award for Dropout Prevention and the 2016 Bixler Award, which recognizes excellence in education. Ongoing research, practical experience as both a teacher and administrator, great personal experience as an adoptive father give some really unique perspective. And we’re thrilled to have you. Welcome, Joe.

Joe Hendershott:
Thanks, Jason. We’re happy to be here for sure. 

Jason Johnson:
Now with Joe, is Joe’s wife, Dardi Hendershott. She’s the cofounder of Hope 4 The Wounded. Along with her administrative role, she’s soon to be certified health and wellness coach, trained and formerly licensed foster adoptive parents, huge advocate for professionals working with children of trauma, own experiences as an adoptive mother and years of walking with Joe through trials and challenges of teaching and education administration give Dardi some unique perspective, brings with her a great passion and excitement around these topics that we’re going to be discussing today. And we couldn’t be more happy to have you with us. Dardi, welcome. 

Dardi Hendershott:
Thank you, thank you.

Jason Johnson:
And then last but not least, we’ve got Christian Moore, the founder of the WhyTry organization, internationally renowned speaker, licensed clinical social worker, advocate for youth, author of The Resilience Breakthrough, and all around good guy. Welcome, Christian.

Christian Moore:
All right. Great to be here, great to be here. I got to say being here with Dardi and Joseph is incredible arm. They walk the walk. Everything we’re going to be talking about today, they’ve lived, done it and just incredible. And during COVID and some of the difficulties going on, I’ve turned to Joe as a support, almost as a personal therapist, mentor of mine. So I promise you guys are in good hands today. I’m so excited. Everybody that tuned in is going to get a treat today with these two incredible people. So I must say I’m honored to be here with them. 

Jason Johnson:
Yeah, I’m excited. So the topic at hand is that intersection between resilience, self-care and healing, specifically for educators. As educators, we’ve faced pretty unprecedented times. We’ve got a lot of feedback about how difficult this year has been, and we know a lot of educators are dealing with a ton right now. And so hopefully, the information we share today is going to be particularly helpful and insightful. One thing I wanted to mention and then I’m going to throw over to the Hendershotts to start the discussion, there’s been I think a lot of reactionary responses to the challenges that COVID has brought and the current circumstance we find ourselves in. 

Jason Johnson:
And one of the great things about Joe and Dardi as field experts is they’ve been really pushing, exploring, and researching and teaching on this message for years. In fact, their most recent book Supporting the Wounded Educator was released in February this year before COVID even hit. They’ve been really long time proponents of this thing. And when we found ourselves in this current situation, I think a lot of people became really suddenly aware of how critical this information is, but we’re really fortunate to have people that have been doing this for a long time. And I wanted to make that clear. I know they’re both humble, but I wanted to make it clear that we have real legitimate experts on this topic here. And so I want to maybe use that as the platform to start off and just throw it over to you, Joe and Dardi, and say get us started, share with us some of your thoughts on these topics and what we should be considering. 

Joe Hendershott:
Well, first of all, we’ve been speaking on the topic of wounded students since around 2006, or I have been. And when I started talking in 2006, people would come up to me afterwards and say, “Hey, what about the wounded educator? We get the wounded kid and we get the wounded student. We understand that and we have a heart and passion for that, but what about us?” And heard that a few times and it started to resonate time after time, year after year. So when I was in my doctoral, worked on research, I started to hear about compassion fatigue, and burnout, and doing a little research and experienced some of that myself. And probably my profession, Dardi can attest to that. She had to live with it. 

Joe Hendershott:
And what’s the difference between compassion fatigue, and burnout? And that’s what we’re going to talk about. And like I said before even COVID hit us, in mid-March, whenever that was, a book came out in 2020 February. And we decided it was an important enough topic for a teacher and an administrator and really educators support staff self-care on this topic. So we took it seriously and we want to provide the support necessary for those who are looking for it.

Dardi Hendershott:
Well, and I think as social emotional learning has become recognized as an integral part of educating the whole child of learning of academic success, we have to take into account a comprehensive approach to social-emotional learning, which includes everyone involved from the teachers, administrators, community members, social workers, everybody, because we all have feelings, we all have needs, we all have reactions to different things. I’m going to pop up our screen to share real quick, and it’s going to be funny for a second, but we threw in here a picture. If you’re going to spend an hour with people, you want to know what their perspective is from what drives them, what makes our heartbeat, and so that’ll be the first thing here.

Joe Hendershott:
And why that’s been pulled up with just say a little bit. I spent about 25 years in public education, has spent a lot of the years working in treatment centers, local facilities, alternative education. 

Dardi Hendershott:
So we know that we know that we know that this is one of the most important, yet one of the hardest jobs there is. But we know that now on a very personal level, our youngest four children… This is our family last summer at our daughter’s wedding. We are typically not dressed this nice, but we put our best foot forward for you all for a minute. But our youngest four children are adopted and we have come to realize the importance of our extended circle, if you will, which includes educators, coaches, the principals at the school because we need all of you to pour into our children. And now, more than ever, as we’re isolated, it’s reestablishing those connections and everything. So this is our family, this is our heartbeat, this is what drives us and makes us realize how important educators are, because your influence in the lives of our family is crucial to their healing. And so we want you to be in your best place so that you’re enjoying what you’re doing and able to do what you do and feel great about it. 

Joe Hendershott:
And help take care of our kids because we’ve relied on school psychologist, counselors, everybody.

Dardi Hendershott:
Yeah, yeah. Everyone has a story. So we’re very thankful. But I guess I’ll just jump into… When we wrote this book, we sat on it for a long time. Jason was so kind to say that we’ve been at this for a while, but we just kept feeling like we didn’t want to just put out like a self-help book of self-care strategies and whatever. So we really started processing, “Hey, we’re talking about children and how trauma impacts them significantly. And so what about us?” And even if we have been one of the fortunate 30% of people that has not experienced some form of trauma, we are exposed to secondary trauma. When we’re working with children, we’re experiencing secondary trauma. And so anyway, we thought, “Really, this book we need to start right where we start with the kids and understand the impact of trauma and where that may become an obstacle to effective self-care.” Did you want to the next slide or…

Joe Hendershott:
Yeah, we’re ready to roll.

Dardi Hendershott:
Yeah, all right. So we’re going to maybe work when… Hang with me. There we go.

Joe Hendershott:
There we go.

Dardi Hendershott:
Okay, got it.

Joe Hendershott:
When we talk about the typologies of wounds with students, I worked with a gentleman by the name of Dr. Terry Wardle, did my independent doctoral work with Dr. Wardle. And he talked with me really about the typologies of wounds of adults and I’ve adjusted it to children, but we’re talking about us now. And so here’s some things that resonated. He said, “Even though these are clinical in nature, they are layman’s terms on how we can maybe identify our own wounds.” And probably more so now than maybe before, do we have wounds of withholding as educators, as human beings as adults? We’ve been withheld, I know, for the first time in my life, certain things over the past few months that I’ve never been withheld, certain things I wanted to grocery store.

Dardi Hendershott:
Dark chocolate. Let’s just be [crosstalk 00:11:24].

Joe Hendershott:
Certain things, things that I liked, I couldn’t always get my hands on. And not that that’s trauma, but when you order your groceries and you get half of them, then you got a family of nine you got to feed, you start questioning things. Wounds of aggression, you talk about how maybe mandated reporting is down maybe for child abuse, but it’s because we’re not around mandated reporters or the kids aren’t around mandated reporters, I should say. And so there’s a lot of wounds of aggression going on by stress, the next one, the wounds caused by stressful events, how many of us have not been affected at some level? There’s the different various degrees that I’m sure Christian’s going to talk to about later with resilience, stressful events, how much we’ve been affected by this. Wounds of betrayal, I don’t know, I’m like that one applies, but some of us may feel like we-

Dardi Hendershott:
Aren’t getting support.

Joe Hendershott:
Yeah, aren’t getting the support that we wanted or thought we needed or should have had, wounds caused by long-term duress. And we’re all under a long-term duress. We’re not sure how long this thing’s going to last, what school going to look like in the fall? What’s it going to look like in California? What’s going to look like in Florida? What’s it going to look like in Hawaii? What’s it going to look like? And when are we going to have vaccines or treatments? So we don’t know. So these are the typologies of wounds we talk about with kids and we just applied them to us as adults as well. 

Joe Hendershott:
So once we’ve identified the wounds, wounds cause false beliefs. So what false beliefs do we have now built into us because of those typologies of wounds of withholding and stressful events? What false beliefs have developed within ourselves? This isn’t going to look the same, we’re not sure of that. This is going to look different, it’s going to be the worst, we’re not sure of that. What false beliefs are we building in ourselves right now? What emotional upheavals being caused from certain current events about uncertainty, about the future, what dysfunctional behavior? And if we don’t deal with these false beliefs coming out of these wounds can lead to life situations. 

Joe Hendershott:
Now, the good news behind trauma and I think Christian could attest to this as a social worker is wounds can be overcome, trauma can be overcome. That’s the good news of trauma. It could be overcome with proper health, but we want to identify it, talk about it, and then move towards ultimately not try a new fix or control a situation, but try to heal a situation, whether it’s our communities, whether it’s our schools, whether it’s our physical ailments, or emotional ailments, it’s about healing. 

Christian Moore:
Yeah, the timing… Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead, Dardi.

Dardi Hendershott:
Oh, no, I was just going to say we’ve posted this a few times on social media and whatnot, but I think that’s the biggest theme in our book is when we acknowledge your feelings or what’s really hard for you right now, you’re on the road to recognizing what kind of self-care you need, because can keep throwing bandages on things. But if we don’t acknowledge what’s the splinter, if we just keep putting the bandage over the splinter, that splinter is not going away. So how are we going to deal with that splinter? And so that’s why we do talk about wounds right at the beginning to give people kind of thinking about, “What different reactions do I have to situations or what kind of false beliefs do I have within myself that are maybe getting in the way of me moving forward?” 

Joe Hendershott:
And one of the ones that I hear all the time when I’ve gone around the country speaking, almost everywhere I go, and Christian, you may hear it, you may not, is somebody who eventually say to me, “Hey, I hear what you’re saying, but I’m just a teacher. I’m just a principal. I’m just a bus driver.” And that’s a false belief. We are having a major influence in the lives of our children, absolutely a possibility. So we want to help people overcome that false belief that they’re just this. There’s so much more to this in our world, in our schools, in our places of business working with… And I say places of business because it could be school, could be like I worked at correctional facilities, alternative education treatment centers, along those lines. 

Christian Moore:
Now, the timing of the book is unbelievable, The Wounded Educator. I don’t think [inaudible 00:16:15] change your timing is so perfect for what’s going on right now. I’m meeting with so many teachers for so many years and working with them. What’s amazing about educators is when it comes to sacrificing for a child, they’re willing to do a limitless sacrifice, they’re willing to go to the extreme to sacrifice for kids, especially kids are struggling across this country. And so if someone said to me that in my life was the most amazing thing you ever saw or experienced, I would say it was the personal sacrifice that educators made for kids. But at the same time, I love about what you’re doing is they have to take that sacrifice and channel it and give themselves that healing and take care of themselves at the same time, which is very complex. And then right now, we’re going into a crisis. 

Christian Moore:
We’re not going into what we’ve dealt with a crisis and we have the uncertainty of the fall coming up and the situation they’re going to be in coming up. And so I just want to share a couple of specific strategies for the uncertainty going into the fall to help prepare a little bit for. And one of the simple ones is anytime you’re dealing with major trauma or crisis and we don’t know what’s around the corner is to just go back to the moment, to stay in the now. I know there’s a lot of stuff out there published around Spain and then now. But to get through the day, just the priority is let’s just get through the day because as a parent right now, I don’t even know what’s going to happen to my kids in school the next few months, the next six weeks or whatever.

Christian Moore:
I’m a parent, I’m talking to educators, I work in education, and I don’t know and what I’m just focusing even in my own family with people close to me is, “Hey, let’s just get through today and we’re going to get through tomorrow.” Be aware of the future, but don’t focus on the details because anything I focus on right now is likely going to change anyhow. Does that make sense? Even if I let my mind cover what you’re talking about, Joe, or I write battles in our mind, if my mind races ahead or my mind just sees me, it doesn’t matter anyways because whatever in my head focus on is, again, it’s probably not going to happen to begin with. And I know that my whole life pretty much what I worry about, if I want to guarantee something’s not going to happen, if I worry about it, that might be why I had an anxiety disorder because it’s self-protecting, it’s a defense mechanism. I worry about everything and then it doesn’t happen. 

Christian Moore:
The second thing that I think is important to focus on is build connections of support with others going through the same thing. And when we started this out, I was alluding to Joe someone who reached out to me really early on after COVID broke. And I remember there was like one morning I’m like, “Oh my goodness, man. I’m about to be bankrupt. I got this problem, that problem.” And I was in a really low place and Joe called me up and we’ve been talking almost weekly since then, just trying to figure out how do we continue to do what we do as consultants and stuff. And so going through the suffering, going through changes and problem-solving with somebody else, going through the same thing, even though we don’t have an answer at the end of the destination, but the problem-solving with a friend or a colleague or something is really, really powerful to help heal. And then if you get stressed with uncertainty in any type of an intense way, that you really want to get help. It’s okay to ask for help, ask for help. 

Dardi Hendershott:
Absolutely, absolutely.

Christian Moore:
There is no weakness. It actually takes more of… or when I work with kids, I always explain to them it takes maturity to ask for help. To stay isolated and not get help is not healthy in the long run. And then the next one is just focus on what you have control over. Right now, I have no control over the leadership making decisions about what they’re going to do next year. I might have a little influence or say, but I don’t control the final decision-making. So I have to let that go. And that’s the hardest one for a lot of us. And that’s a hard one for me. I don’t know, Joe, if you want to talk about that or Dardi, just focus on what you have control over.

Joe Hendershott:
Well, I think the big thing I can say all the time is people feel like they have to control the situation and that ruins relationships. If you try to control something or someone, that’s going to ruin it. So if we try to control a community, if we try to control something, there’s a certain amount of control that has to be had, but if you stay in control, then you can’t really get to the healing. And that’s where you’re asking people to go get professional help or help process and talk through with friends as we’ve talked through, and I think that’s so important. Well, we’ll get to that later. I’m going to jump ahead. You decided now. 

Christian Moore:
No, thanks for sharing that. But I think in change, one thing I’ve noticed doing a lot with all this challenges that have been going on and stuff is I’ve created some new relationships, I’ve learned more about myself. One of the realities of going through suffering is maturity and growth are born in change. It’s in that suffering, in that change, even those painful while you’re going through it. But we know, man, when we look back and hopefully with all the tremendous stuff going on, tremendous pain that’s going on that we as a country, we as individuals, communities, and as a country will mature and change in ways that help us thrive more. And so it’s just that looking for opportunities in the transition of change. 

Christian Moore:
And then the last one here is just remember what you’ve overcome in the past. Man, I know just as Dardi shared some stories and some experiences, man, she’s overcome lots of stuff, you’ve overcome lots of stuff. I’ve referred you to Dardi and Joe have both been on my podcast, The Resilience Breakthrough Podcast. If you want to hear more from them, please go listen to their episode on The Resilience Breakthrough Podcast. But just knowing that, “Hey, we’re resilient because of what we have overcome,” the number one thing that’s going to show up in our lives is suffering and then to be able to channel that suffering in powerful ways is still important. But it’s just reminding yourself, “I’ve overcome this, this, this, this, and this.” We’ve all overcome so much. We can’t forget the journey we’ve already been on, we’ve been down because our resilience is built in that journey and all the different paths we taken in life. 

Dardi Hendershott:
Yeah. And I think one of the greatest things that we can do for one another right now is to take time to share those stories with other people so that they can remind us, too, because right now, we’re all feeling very disconnected. And so one of the things we’ve talked about previously are safe places. And every expert in the world says that healing takes place in safe spaces. Well, what is a safe space? And we can remember our resilience as an individual, but it takes a lot of effort. And then we tend to mix in our false beliefs and our doubts and all of those things. But if we surround ourselves intentionally with relationships where… And that’s where at the end of the book, we talk about professional self-care strategies. And the reason that we do that is because if we’re doing all these things to try to build our resilience and everything, but then we’re walking into an environment that basically negates every single thing that we just tried to do for ourselves, it just not going to go well. 

Dardi Hendershott:
And so we have to be intentional with the cultures that we’re creating and we can’t control other people. But we can be intentional with how we ask other people some questions and then take the time to listen to their stories and hear their stories of resilience because then that’s encouraging to us. I know, Christian, we’ve talked very in depth about the details of things and Joe and I are very open and candid about some of the struggles that we’ve encountered in our life in the book. But the reason for that is not because we want sympathy, but because we’ve all encountered things that are just hard. And so when you are absolutely right I believe in the times of uncertainty, we have to remember those things. But I think that in community, we can really be encouraged in those things like, “Wow, we are resilient people, we can do hard things.” 

Joe Hendershott:
Well, and I think just playing off that, it makes us more empathic towards one another, because across the world, the whole world is dealing with this pandemic. It’s put us all on a level playing field and empathy is ability to step in someone else’s shoes and to feel what they’re feeling. So we can all understand what some of those typologies wounds and cause and effects of wounds that we’ve talked about. And the opposite of empathy is indifference. And I’m a hopeful person, we’re hope for the wounded, so I just hope that through the end of all this is we become more empathetic as a world, as a community, as a culture, as a profession, as a person. I just hope that I become more empathetic with my brothers and sisters across the world, and because we’re all dealing with the same stuff and we’ve all been made and how I say we all have been though a lot of us have been wounded at some level of depending on the severity of the wound. And we all need that compassion and empathy again. Mother Teresa, I think she’s a saint, so I’ll quote a say-

Dardi Hendershott:
You can quote a say. Quote a say for your wife. Both are safe. 

Joe Hendershott:
She said, “The ills of society today is based on the fact that we’ve become indifferent to the needs of our brothers and sisters. The ills of society today is because we’ve become indifferent to the needs of our brothers and sisters.” Now, it’s a paraphrase, but I get the point. We really, I think, through what we’re going through now was we’re starting to see less indifference and we’re starting to come together and realize that we were leaning on each other more. And I think that’s so important. And it’s what we talk about in the book about self-care, that we have to self-care and help each other with being empathic with one another.

Christian Moore:
Yeah. I think a higher level of empathy is for people to really feel, heard, and seen. I love, Dardi, a minute ago you were talking about a safe space where people really need to be heard for that safe place to really take place. So someone like me I struggle with listening because I’m a nonstop talking, everybody out there that knows me knows I talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. And that’s what I do and it’s my biggest weakness. But I’m just turning 50 this year and I’m realizing anybody around me is going to feel a lot safer if I can be quiet, if I can listen to different levels. 

Christian Moore:
One thing, we can listen in multiple different levels, we can really hear someone and there’s almost listening on offense and Jason’s working on a project right now around resilient listening. And I know, Jason, if you can unmute yourself there for a second, we have you in the conversation that I think used to be important to what Dardi was talking about with people feeling really heard. I don’t know if you have any comments on that, Jason, on helping people really feel heard. I know it’s something you’ve been thinking a lot about lately. 

Jason Johnson:
Yeah, yeah. I think it overlaps with this idea of resilient listening that we’re building into our model on is this… Some people would call it active listening, but it’s not. So there’s the element of silencing yourself and not being on the defense or not actively trying to figure out what you’re going to say, but then also combining it with the empathy piece where you’re really trying to hear beyond just the words, but also recognize the feeling or the emotion that connects with the words or the behavior that are expressing something. And when we can do that and you create that space of safety for somebody to really feel heard, then that safety that already mentioned starts to occur. And when people feel safe, then that I think the ideal space to heal and for human connection to occur, and that connection piece becomes really foundational towards starting to build resilience because we know one of the protective factors that contributes to resilience, especially for kids is connection to a caring adult. 

Jason Johnson:
But the interesting thing is how much it applies to us as grownups as well. And I think Joe and Dardi are going to get into this a little bit more. We’ve all shared this recent traumatic event where we all need to heal from this. And I’m hoping one of the things that as educators and facilitators and practitioners that we’ll be able to take from this is really learning how to apply this with our kids as well and really create those spaces so that our classrooms and our offices can really become places for… and even our Zoom platforms, if that’s what we’re doing, can become spaces where healing can start to occur and we can build those communities that really contribute to resilience.

Christian Moore:
Yeah. Thanks, Jason. Thanks so much for sharing that. I think to add to that a little bit is that our emotions are really hurt. I think that that’s a breakthrough for a safe places where emotions are really heard and we seek understanding right now this world is very divided and people are debating whether you wear a mask or not wear a mask and what that means and then we have all the racial equality. There’s a huge divisiveness in this world right now. I think that divisiveness is its own trauma. You know what I mean? That we’re dealing with it. I know, Joe and Dardi, your kids have dealt with some of that. You have a biracial family that’s incredible and you dealt with some of that. I don’t know if you guys would be willing to share a little bit of what you see in your own home. And then I want to maybe share an example to how to work through that, but when you guys-

Dardi Hendershott:
I think as far as the listening piece, it’s hard as a mama bear. And I don’t know what it’s like to be in a different color skin than white. But when we adopted children, we did gain a new perspective. So we began educating ourselves. And I realized through that education and through that listening was where our learning came. And I found that when we were willing to sit in those conversations and not listen to respond but listen to hear, you get a very different conversation going. I think people’s need to listen to respond is rooted in, “Well, no, I need to explain myself like a defensive. I don’t want you to be offended or whatever.” But I think sometimes we have to be willing to get uncomfortable with some of the biases we maybe grew up with and different things like that. 

Dardi Hendershott:
And I really, oh my goodness, I just think that if we could start establishing some of those amazing relationships… And it’s funny because right now what has happened with COVID, the way that it’s divided all of us up into our safe places at home where we’re staying home and all of this, the flip side is it’s made us sit and have conversations with people without a whole lot of distractions, because honestly, I have to pay attention to what I’m doing with these buttons and I have to pay attention to what you’re saying. But it’s enabled us to reach so many more people to have these hard conversations.

Dardi Hendershott:
And we don’t pretend to have all the answers. We had sent out a statement from Hope 4 The Wounded a while back because we didn’t want our silence to be misinterpreted as indifference. We definitely feel this. we don’t have all the answers, but what we’ve suggested is you need to see people and leave the judgment card at home, see people, and then ask questions and listen. And then number three was listen some more [crosstalk 00:34:04] because we were recently in a conversation with a gentleman and he was very honest, I bless his heart. But he said, “I have a hard time because if there’s a moment of quiet, I feel like I need to fill it.” And isn’t that the truth? We have become so accustomed to noise that we’re all trying to fill the gaps and we’re just all scrambling to fill these gaps. And we really just need to settle in and listen and hear one another.

Joe Hendershott:
Yeah. I think it’s like… I believe it was Robert Hanvey talks about perspective consciousness, how we’re trying to gain a new perspective. And it’s having an awareness of and an appreciation that other people have views of the world different than our own. So even beyond listening, which is so critical, but it’s they have that awareness that other people not only have different views of the world than our own, but appreciating that other people have views of the world different than our own. And I think-

Christian Moore:
That would be important world if we all saw things the same. 

Joe Hendershott:
Yeah. So I think that perspective consciousness like Dardi says, “We’re trying to develop our perspective consciousness just by listening, listening to our neighbors, listening to our friends, listening to people that want to help teach us.” And yes, we’ve had to deal with some of this stuff as parents, but we haven’t had to live it as an individual, but we’ve had to live it as parents. 

Christian Moore:
That’s amazing. I know we’re going to have a ton of time, but I noticed from talking to you guys, man, you guys have done some amazing stuff with your family and helping them understand what’s going on and stuff. And I think right now, what you were talking about, Dardi, working through those biases are so important. So I just want to share three quick strategies on how to work through those biases. When I’m out speaking, people ask me all the time, one of the things we teach is something called relational resilience, what causes people to not give up? One of the biggest X factors is for someone to need them, for you to need someone else and someone else to need you, that relational resilience, that interdependence. But people always ask me, “How do I have that love, that connection, that relational resilience with people with different views, different perspectives, or someone I don’t even like, how would I go about that?”

Christian Moore:
I think part of our healing and dealing with change in the world right now, we have to be able to really understand how to work through those biases. So I want to share a couple of things that I’ve been sharing. These are things that I’m using constantly in my life and I’ve used since I was a child, when I was a child being raised in an African American home and stuff that really, really I had to learn early in life. And the first one is to seek understanding over agreement. That goes back to what all three of you were talking about, that listening, but we have to seek understanding over agreement first. 

Christian Moore:
So people say this to me all the time because I debate all kinds of subjects all the time. And I made this mistake for years. I would say to people, “Let’s agree to disagree.” And every time I walked away from someone, when I said, “Hey,” every time those words came out of my mouth, let’s agree to disagree, I was saying, “Look, I’m more right than you. You don’t get where I’m coming from. So we need to agree to disagree.” And I’ve surveyed lots of people asking them do they feel better when they walk away from someone to agree to disagree. And most people tell me they don’t feel heard. They go. “Well, they weren’t willing to change their view, I wasn’t willing to change my view.” So people don’t usually walk away feeling better when you say let’s agree to disagree. You don’t feel validated when that happens and you don’t get my right point of view usually is what I’m saying when I do that. And so that’s why they’re seeking understanding. 

Christian Moore:
And we really have to go to school on the other perspective to really understand it. So anyway, sort of my seven million miles across this planet, these three things I’ve learned I have to do to be able to pretty much connect with, get along with anybody, and truly respect where they’re standing, even if it’s an opposite view. So the first thing I’ve learned I have to do is I have to lead out with unconditional love, that I’m going to love them no matter what their strengths, their weaknesses, their perspective, I’m just going to try and be unconditional. The opposite of that is conditional love, I’ll love you if dot, dot, dot, dot. I’ll show love and respect to you. You’re the type of person I want to be around the most if you have my view, my perspective, my background, skin color, whatever those similarities are. 

Christian Moore:
So I have to really let the conditional love go. As a business owner, I have to be conditional sometimes. If my employees don’t do A, B, or C, I’m going to have to let them go. It’s a conditional relationship. But in the world of healing and dealing with complexity, I’m going to get a lot further and that person’s more likely to feel hurt. I’m going to hear their emotions if I can lead out with unconditional love. So that’s the first step. The second step is I have to be okay with being wrong. The first thing is I have to be aware that I’m wrong. At 50 years old, I’ve learned I’m far more wrong than right in many, many situations. That’s interesting. The more you talk to someone who has 40 years of studying any subject matter, they’ll tell you I’ve learned how little they know about the subject matter after spending 40 years on it, because that awareness is so high when they’ve devoted themselves to something for 40 years. 

Christian Moore:
And so it’s okay to be wrong. It’s interesting when I’m speaking to thousands of people, sometimes I’ll say… I’m talking about this, I’ll say, “Write down the last three times you were wrong.” Guess how many people start writing things down? Usually, nobody writes anything. And it’s because we’ve just been so much less our whole lives that we just made for our mental health or it’s a built-in defense mechanism. We really don’t pay much attention too long to what we got wrong in our worldview or our understanding. It’s just a built-in protected. So it’s okay to be wrong. And there’s sociology, I’ve done research, recently have found that people are wrong all the time. That’s probably our number one biggest blind spot. 

Christian Moore:
So when my kids ask me a question now, oftentimes I’ll give them a couple different perspectives. I’ll say, “Hey, this is your dad’s view. But trust me, I could be wrong.” So you need to research this yourself, you need to question me, you need to question what’s going on around you. Because in my 50 years on this earth, again, I’m far more wrong than right. But again, I wish it didn’t take me 50 years to understand that. And then the third one is to see things from three or more perspectives. I used to think I was doing great if I could see things from two different points of view. But my goal now is to truly try to understand things from three or more different perspectives, to put on multiple frames, multiple perspectives of seeing something. 

Christian Moore:
So if you can almost visualize this first part I’m talking about, if you visualize a heart, it’s a flexible heart. If you’re unconditional, you’re being flexible. If you realize you could be wrong and you’re okay with learning new information, that’s flexibility. And then the third one is seeing things from multiple perspectives, that’s flexibility. Now, the opposite of this is like this first part I was just sharing with around flexibility is made of maybe it’s flexible, it’s made of clock. The second heart is a rigid stone, and that is you lead out with conditional love. So there’s no flexibility. I’m right, you’re wrong, is conditional. And I’ll love you and respect you if you have my worldview, my beliefs, my perspective.

Christian Moore:
And then the second step, of course, on the stone, the hard rock stone is I’m right. I don’t have to be flexible, I’m right. And then the third one is one view. And so if we can go from more of that rigid heart to that more flexible, it’s just amazing what happens when… And usually the conclusion that I come to lots of people will have polar opposite views and perspectives, but usually our motives are the same. We want what’s in best interest of our family, our children, our community, society. Even though we have completely opposite perspective, our motives usually are pretty identical. And so as I’m traveling around and I meet… Literally, every time I go out and meet so many people with completely different views than mine, but I find that our motives are usually pretty similar. But anyway, so I just wanted to plant those three things and maybe, Dardi and Joe, please feel free to share where I’m wrong because I may be wrong on those three things. But what are your feelings about those three things I guess? 

Dardi Hendershott:
No, I think that those are all great points and everything for dealing with the uncertainty and the different perspectives that are going on. It’s noisy in the world right now. And I know I already said that, but I think it’s worth repeating that everybody’s trying to come up with the answer or the right way, or like you said, with the masks, with how we’re handling inequity, how we’re handling COVID, how we’re handling school reopening, all the things. I think one of the things that… This just happened last night. I was out with my son, walking our daughter’s dogs down the street, we’re visiting them. And there was a young mommy with a baby in one of those front carriers. She had the bottle on the baby’s mouth and was balancing dinner. She had walked down the street with dinner in her hand and I thought, “That’s like the perfect picture of what our educators are dealing with right now.” They’ve had to do all these gymnastics, like it’s a life game of twister to make education work.

Dardi Hendershott:
And I think first we just have to have such a respect for the fact that that’s where everybody is now. I know that you had spoken about staying in the moment. And I agree with that because I have a couple of slides that have self-care strategies and one of strategies is to unplug. And one of the reasons to unplug is to be in the moment. But the flip side is I think we can’t lose sight of where it is we want to go. And so when we’re talking about fall and all of the uncertainties, I don’t have any of the answers for that. But what I can say is we can be in two different positions. We can either be bailing out the boat constantly, or we can compile our crew and work together to make this boat go. You know what I’m saying?

Dardi Hendershott:
So there’s two different things. And I think you have the one that’s just scrambling, trying to figure it all out and listening to all the noise and really just getting dragged down, because that’s part of the problem is if we don’t take time to unplug, a lot of the noise is really dragging us down and distracting us from what we hope to accomplish. Why did we get into this? I’m a darn good teacher. And so this is an obstacle, but I’ve spent my life getting through obstacles, whether it was a child’s learning disability, or a behavior, or trauma, or anything. And so do you want me to share the screen?

Jason Johnson:
Yeah, Dardi, I don’t want to distract your thought. But yeah, I was going to say if you could share that slide, that might be great. We’ve had a couple people that have submitted comments about just their generally anxiety about returning amidst uncertainty. And I think your slides may speak to that. 

Dardi Hendershott:
Yeah. So first of all, being in the moment, I think… And I know a lot of people see the word journal and that just looks like work, and I get that. But I want to tell you from a personal perspective, I’ve been journaling for over 14 years now. And journaling helps me to be in the moment and then helps me to become productive in those moments. Instead of getting caught up in the feeling overwhelmed, it’s okay to acknowledge this feelings, but you don’t have to stay there. Journaling is a safe place. We’re talking about safe places. Journaling is a safe place where you can process through some of your feelings. And then what I always find so interesting is I’ll go in thinking one thing. And by the time I’m done journaling, I’ve gone in a completely different direction and a couple of things either happen. 

Dardi Hendershott:
I start to feel excited because a plan is coming into mind, or I feel like, “Okay, I just put that down for a while and I don’t have to think about it anymore.” It’s just really a great outlet. And so these are only a few of our self-care strategies because due to time we can’t go through all of them. But the other one that I really want to encourage people with right now is choosing your words wisely. And I find that funny with everything that’s going on because a lot of people are not filtering their thoughts. They think it, and they put it out there as gospel. But that’s not even what I meant or what we meant by this.

Dardi Hendershott:
When we say choose your words wisely, choose how you’re talking to yourself. You can pour hope into yourself or hopelessness into yourself with your words. You can feed your false beliefs or you can counter your false beliefs. And it’s empowering when you start recognizing like Christian said earlier on, when we start remembering things that we’ve overcome, or we stop and think about that kiddo that nobody else could reach, but I did or, “Okay, I had on the fly build the ship to deliver content because COVID came. But you know what? I did it. It may not have been beautiful, but we stayed afloat and we did it.” Make sure those words are full of truth and that you are empowering inner thoughts.

Joe Hendershott:
And that’s what our book talks about is… I know when I go round, a lot of people say, “Hey, I’m burnt out, I’m burnt out.” Choosing our words wisely. If we were burnt out, people that are tuning into this probably aren’t burnt out, or they would have not tuned in. Now, they’re compassion fatigue. They’re compassionate, they’re tired, and they keep giving of themselves anyways. They’ve just put in this whole new way of doing business, this whole way of educating, but they just keep pouring out anyways. But we want to self-care like Dardi is talking about, the journaling. She’s going to talk about unplugging and… Well, I’ll talk about unplugging. I guess I can do that real quick. 

Dardi Hendershott:
I’ve already did something. 

Joe Hendershott:
Well, I had to unplug because I was a principal for years and I had to learn to really unplug myself because I was connected all the time. But choosing our words [inaudible 00:49:25] and I think to say we’re compassion fatigue is, “Hey, we’re compassionate people, we’re tired.” That’s okay, but take care of yourself, whatever that is, what some of the things Dardi is talking about. But I just wanted to throw that in there. 

Christian Moore:
I just want to add one thing real quick to what you guys were just talking to about unplugging and getting that reconnection and also attacking our false beliefs. One thing that I’m sharing a lot with kids right now is we don’t control the thoughts that pop into our head. But during that unplugging time, so I’ll try to do this for 20, 30 minutes a day and people can do this lots of different ways, you can call it a million different things, whether it’s mindfulness, or prayer, or meditate, whatever you want to call it. I was talking to my son yesterday and I said, “Don’t think about a pink zebra.” And he’s laughing because he’s just starting to realize, “Well, I don’t control any thoughts that go through my head.”

Christian Moore:
And one of the most empowering things is sometime during the day is to just lay there and let thoughts pop in your head and then have a conversation with them. Those that know me know I battle, I take medication for anxiety. I have been on this earth for 50 years. I’ve never had a moment without anxiety, is with me 24/7. So now, I named anxiety Bob. When the anxiety pops into my head, I walk with it, I visualize myself being arm and arm with my anxiety, that we’re going to go, “Hey, you haven’t left me for the first 50 years, you’re probably not going to leave me for the next 50 years. So we’re best friends now. I’m not fighting you.” And for anxiety for me goes down and I’m less likely to have a panic attack if I’m not fighting anxiety, I’m excited, I’m walking with the anxiety. 

Christian Moore:
But to do that, I have to literally question my thoughts, connect with them and first observe them and then channel them in productive ways. I just want to plant that seed. That’s a really important thing with dealing with change and uncertainty is that’s going to raise a lot of emotion in us. And right now, we know anxiety is just passed up depression. It is the number one disorder pretty much in the world right now. And I’ve learned with anxiety, I can’t fight anxiety. I’ve never been able to win that battle, but I know how to walk with it now. 

Christian Moore:
But it’s observing those thoughts and it can be any thoughts. And then realizing, “I don’t need to beat myself up,” because you’re really not controlling the thoughts popping into your mind. And if you don’t think that’s the case, try to control the thoughts in your head and it will be a nightmare, I promise you. And so it’s the ability to observe them and then channel them and put them in good context is a powerful, powerful skill. That’s about a five-hour workshop I’m sharing [crosstalk 00:52:21]. But I just want to play it, I guess, with everybody. 

Dardi Hendershott:
Yeah, because we talk in the book about how people have become accustomed. We live in an immediate gratification. Everything needs to look good, everything needs to feel good. And people portray that, but that’s not real life. Real life has a lot of bumps and bruises. And it’s okay to sit in those for a while because at some point I think we say something about if unresolved stuff like that ends up coming out in a cesspool of emotions at some point. And so if you allow yourself to ignore… It’s okay to feel grief. I have felt grief during this time. I was supposed to be there when our first granddaughter was born. I was supposed to be my daughter’s doula. COVID didn’t allow that.

Dardi Hendershott:
Educators are feeling grief because they didn’t get to say goodbye to their kiddos properly like they normally would wrap up a school year. They put that bow on top with the end of the year party and field days and all that didn’t happen. Graduations now… We’ve got a lot of grief right now and we can’t just discount those feelings. It’s okay to feel those feelings instead of trying to be distracted from them. And we’re not counselors or therapists, this is more from personal. We’ve lived in the digital times and we’re living through COVID right along all with the rest of you and-

Joe Hendershott:
We talk about it in our book right out of the gate, how tragedy would strike in maybe a high school where I was at. And I immediately jumped into taken care of… And that’s my job, is take care of everybody else. And then at the end of the day, you’re sitting there on your own stuff and you really need to learn to self-care. And that’s a simplistic model.

Dardi Hendershott:
Yeah, because all of you have seen I’m sure some of the neat things where teachers are driving by their students’ houses and waving to try to keep those connections intact. And I just respect that. I respect the gymnastics that they have done to make this work. But now, this summer it’s time to be reflective and it’s okay to be reflective and intentional with your interactions and different things like that too. Yeah, but I think we’re starting to run short on time, so maybe we should jump to the next slide.

Christian Moore:
And those were great insights, both of you. Thank you, thank you for sharing that. Hey, Jason, are there any questions you want us to try to answer here in the last five minutes? 

Jason Johnson:
No, I think you’re on the track of the questions that have come up. Like I said, there’s been a lot of expression and use of the word anxiety around returning, part of which is because of the uncertainty around it. There’s some people that have even expressed that they don’t even personally necessarily feel a full level of safety just because of the uncertainty around COVID that they’re returning to how can they simultaneously self-care and also create an environment for their kids that feels safe. That’s the direction that the comments and the questions that we’ve had coming in has taken. So I think the strategies you’ve been sharing are in line with that. But if you have any other ideas that go along with that, I think it would be appreciated. 

Dardi Hendershott:
I think one of the big things I’ve been wanting to say to people and have said to people is we need to extend grace, not just to others… And grace isn’t just a term for church, grace is a temporary exemption to others who maybe are short-fused, or impatient, or panicked, or full of anxiety, or whatever that is, but extending grace to ourselves as well. Everybody’s worried about neatness standards and I’ll bring it in trouble for some of this. But we just have to say, “To heck with the standards right now.” That’s one thing I give our governor huge props for. He said, “The testing is the least of our concerns right now.” And it really is. 

Dardi Hendershott:
And I think at the foundation of what we just need to start brainstorming are how do we continue creating community and staying engaged versus becoming isolated because it’s in community where we’re going to find comradery, where we’re going to find hope, where we’re going to find healing, where we’re going to find encouragement, where we’re going to find connection and we just really, really need that. So I think if we focus on those things… There are so many logistical things. I can’t even begin to answer them because my state is going to come up with their own stuff.

Dardi Hendershott:
So if we can’t control any of that, what can we control? And if you saw on the last slide, I said something about being intentional with kindness. And that may seem counterintuitive when we’re talking about self-care, but it’s actually, I think, one of the most amazing things that we can do is think right now that kindness is simply connecting with somebody else. I’ve been intentional, it might sound crazy, but I go on walks all over my neighborhood and I have made more eye contact with people in their driveways or out walking their dog, or the other day I saved somebody’s child who went off road, and then I just put all the social distancing aside. But she was on a bike, is a long story.

Dardi Hendershott:
But just because we are physical distancing, we cannot distance. We have to keep those connections going. But we have to be intentional with that because it would be really easy to put our mask on and just stay tunnel vision, get to the store, get my list, get out, get home where it’s safe. And I think just allowing educators the opportunity to get creative again because everybody’s different in the way they connect with people. So I think revisiting their original inspiration for getting into education, I’m sure had something to do with impacting children, but they’re all unique. Every educator is unique in the way that they connect with children, suspend this summer, not thinking about all the logistics as much as who am I and how do I connect best with kids and how can I make that work if I have to use this new platform again? 

Christian Moore:
And I love what you’re saying there about that personal battle, man, put the energy into that personal backer. So many of those things outside of us are so out of our control. And if you’re looking at like time maximization, I hear what you’re saying, Dardi. That’s time maximization, maybe that personal healing. And I just want to leave you one quick thought on self-grace that’s so important is we have different hats, different roles we all wear from father, mother, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, teacher, counselor, social worker, school administrator. We all wear these different hats, but we have to give ourselves grace in all our different hats we’re wearing. Does that make sense because we can beat ourselves up from maybe a parenting standpoint, but I’m not going to beat myself up in my professional world or whatever? 

Christian Moore:
So I’m just saying across the board, with all the different hats we wear as individuals, we got to give ourselves self-grace in each one of those different roles that we carry ourselves in. Because I’ll see sometimes as a therapist, we won’t beat ourselves up in one area, but we’ll beat ourselves up in another area. We might beat ourselves up emotionally, spiritually, or whatever this context is, we need to give ourselves grace, wherever we’re standing in our journey. And always say the kryptonite of resilience, and then one thing that will stop us from wanting to bounce back is if we don’t forgive ourselves. We have to be able to forgive ourselves. We have no desire to bounce back. 

Christian Moore:
And in closing, I’ll let you have the last word there, Joe. I can tell you’re ready to say something just real quick. We’ll give you the last word. Please check out for the listeners out there, we have a free parenting guide for resilience and parents activities… a resilient parenting guide where families can connect with their kids and learn resilience skills. And that’s on our website, whytry.org, for free. And I have Joe and Dardi to share with you a little bit how you can access them as well. And they’re my heroes. Please, if you haven’t listened to the podcast between us, we have a great podcast known as The Resilience Breakthrough Podcast and get that on our website. And those are two free things you can access via the website and the podcast. So please check out that podcast, The Resilience Breakthrough. All right, Joe and Dardi-

Dardi Hendershott:
What were you going to say? Were you going to say something. I can tell about our website. Our website is www.hope4thewounded.org. And on the website, there’s all kinds of resources on there. We have a free 21-question survey about empathy and education. And it’s free for download on there. But we also have some neat online courses for people right now. People are looking to get certificate hours, but it’s also available. We have a partnership with the university where you can get graduate credits for those courses. So there’s just all kinds of stuff. So go take a look around and links to our books are on there. Everything is there on the website. So we’d love to have you visit us. And of course, if you have questions, we’re the ones that answer it. We are a mom-and-pop ordeal here. So you get us if you email. Yeah.

Joe Hendershott:
And we answer our emails. So if you have any questions, just email us, or we would love to work with you and talk with you. We appreciate Christian’s leadership, Jason, your leadership, WhyTry’s leadership? And they help people with their fears, just do the best.

Christian Moore:
Yeah, I just want to say the Hendershotts will do whatever they can. They will go to the extreme to knock the door down to help you. If you reach out to them, they will not let you down. That’s one thing I know about that great family. So do not be afraid to reach out to them and they’ll be there for you, that’s who they are. They’re the real deal.

Dardi Hendershott:
Oh, thank you.

Joe Hendershott:
Thank you, Christian.

Dardi Hendershott:
Thank you.

Joe Hendershott:
We appreciate your leadership and just all the leaders that are helping us through this. We [crosstalk 01:03:21].

Christian Moore:
And all the educators, too, our hearts are with you, man. All those great educators, man, these kids need you guys, man. So thanks for being in this fight. You guys are doing the most important work on the planet. You’re our heroes. Thank you guys. 

Dardi Hendershott:
All right. Thank you. 

Jason Johnson:
Yes, thank you everybody. I’ve put up resources on the shared slide. You can go to the Hendershotts’ website. You can see the resilience parent guide Christian talked about. But big shout out. Everybody give a virtual round of applause to Joe and Dardi for joining us. And thank you so much. It was fun to hear where you’re all from. Oh, they’re throwing their hands up for you guys. I love it.

Dardi Hendershott:
Yeah. [inaudible 01:03:56] I love the [inaudible 01:03:58]. That’s awesome.

Jason Johnson:
Thank you so much for joining us and big thank you to all the educators out there that are doing this under difficult circumstances. All the best. We’re here for you. We want to help you out. Let us know if there’s anything that we can do. But thank you. Keep being great. These kids are lucky to have you in their lives and let us know how we can help. Thanks everyone.

Dardi Hendershott:
Thank you.